Solara, Trame, and ReactPy: In-Depth Comparison for Python Developers
When you are working with python choosing the right Frontend Library is very essential, you have to know at least one frontend library. it will help you to becoming a full-stack developer, creating dashboards and even helping in everyday life. ln this blog post we are going to look at three popular tools : Solara, Trame, and ReactPy. Every tool offer unique features for developing applications.
Solara
Solara allows you to create web applications using only Python by either using ipywidgets or a React-like API on top of ipywidgets. These applications are meant for Jupyter Notebook as well as individual web application that uses frameworks like FastAPI.
If you have Solara, components can be easily coded and tracking the state becomes an easy task hence making development time-consuming and maintainable respectively.
Solara also gives users the power of python’s rich environment which means that they can still enjoy their favorite libraries while increasing their skills in programming websites.
Therefore, if one needs to develop a large, scalable website or get widgets for his/her python notebook, then Solara is what one should go for.
Here are some drawbacks: unlike say streamlit and other better known alternatives, not everyone knows about it so it might be tricky to find solutions to problems or templates with code examples at all. Others mention lack of any documentation. Lastly, this tool will be harder to work with because you must know how to use state and manage components which depend on each other.
Trame
Trame is an open-source platform that simplifies the creation of interactive and visually stunning web applications with minimal knowledge of web development or technology. This platform depends on Python and can create web-based applications in minutes using platforms such as VTK, ParaView, Vega etc.
Trame offers a high-level framework for developing stateful reactive web apps; it can be used locally as a desktop app but also deployed in the cloud/on-premise to access big and/or sensitive data. With this in mind, Trame leverages existing libraries or tools like Vuetify, Altair, Vega Deck, VTK, ParaView among others which come with dozens of their capabilities.
With Trame you can create interactive data processing apps with rich visualizations without switching languages or technologies. The availability of various layouts allows you build your application quickly. Additionally, Trame can work either on the client-side or server-side or even combine both sides.
Hence it’s worth trying out if someone wants to develop scientific apps with interactive complex visualizations and simulations (even 3D!). It’s multi-platform, contains lots of useful functions and at the same time looks beautiful from outside.
There are a few cons unfortunately. Being rather new, Trame does not have large community.
ReactPy
ReactPy is a Python package that makes it possible to create user interfaces (UI) without JavaScript. It enables developers to put together interfaces with simple, reusable components like ReactJS.ReactPy interfaces can be built for different backends such as Flask, FastAPI, Sanic, Tornado, Django, Jupyter and Plotly-Dash.
ReactPy can build anything you can build in ReactJS. Most of the React features like state management, hooks, components and others are already implemented in ReactPy.
In conclusion, if you know ReactJS well enough and would love your backend and frontend in one language then go for ReactPy. Otherwise, it’s just a good library to write multi-page websites the same way you write landing pages or other things typical written in HTML/CSS/JS. The main disadvantage of using ReactPy is that it’s relatively n ew; so there aren’t many libraries available like in ReactJS. Moreover, some bugs may show up since this framework remains under development hence lacking perfection across all its features.
